Thursday, January 1, 2015

A Pew Research survey released just before the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting reported more Americans care about gun rights than gun control. But they asked the wrong question, so they came to the wrong conclusion. Here's my attempt to set the record straight and help the cause of gun violence prevention.

The Pew Research Center reported
that for the first time in over two decades, Americans believe it is more
important to protect gun rights than it is to control gun ownership, by 52 to
46 percent.[i] The
report received widespread coverage because it stands in stark contrast to the
crisis of gun violence that claims 30,000 lives each year. But the premise of
the question is flawed, as Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political
research, later admitted.[ii] It
presents a false choice between regulating firearms and protecting Second
Amendment rights.

It’s time to stop calling the
efforts of the gun violence prevention movement “gun control.” Contrary to gun
rights absolutists who call us “gun grabbers,” we are for reasonable regulation
of firearms that keeps guns out of the hands of dangerous people. We also believe in balancing public safety against
individual rights with restrictions on highly lethal weaponry such as large
capacity magazines and firearms designed for military use.

Asked in a way that appropriately
frames the debate, Americans support our goals in far higher proportions than they
support unfettered gun ownership. In a survey conducted for Everytown for Gun
Safety, 63 percent of voters believe it is more important to make it harder for
dangerous or severely mentally ill people to get guns than it is to protect the
right to own guns.[iii] The
leading reform to achieve this is background checks for all gun sales,
supported by 92 percent of voters and 92 percent of gun-owning households.[iv]

The more disturbing statistic in
the Pew survey is that 57 percent of Americans believe that guns do more to
protect people from crime than put their safety at risk. Given this belief,
it’s easy to see why many Americans bristle at the abstract concept of constraining
gun ownership.

The fallacy is that people who
believe guns make us safer are dead wrong. If it were true, the U.S., with 300
million civilian-owned firearms, would be the safest country in the world. Not
by a long shot. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine found
that across 27 developed countries there was no significant relationship
between per capita gun ownership and crime rates.[v] What
is true is that higher rates of gun ownership are associated with higher rates
of gun deaths, with the U.S. at the top of the list for both.[vi]

The notion that guns make us
safer is simply not true, especially when it comes to guns in the home. A study
by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found “there is no credible
evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces
the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in.”[vii]In fact, guns in the home make them more
dangerous.

Guns are much more likely to be
used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional
shooting than to be used in self-defense—up to 22 times more likely by some
estimates[viii].
The toll on children and women is particularly high. According to data from the
National Violent Death Reporting System, children are more likely to be killed
by guns in the home than anywhere else, with four out of five deaths under age
16 occurring in the home.[ix]
In domestic abuse situations the risk of homicide for women increases by 500
percent when guns are present. Over the past 25 years more intimate partner
homicides have been committed with guns than with all other weapons combined.[x]

In the face of these statistics,
why do so many Americans oppose stronger gun safety laws? Two reasons: many
don’t realize that gun laws work and many believe our laws are stronger than
they are.

A study by the Benensen Strategy
Group found half of voters favor stronger enforcement of existing gun laws over
new laws.[xi]
But, of the 50 percent favoring stronger enforcement, nearly half falsely
believe current law requires background checks for all gun purchases and that
assault weapons are illegal.

With so many gun deaths, it’s
not surprising that people believe gun laws don’t work. But the problem is not
too many laws that aren’t enforced, but weak laws that allow dangerous people easy
access to firearms. For example, there is no federal law criminalizing gun
trafficking[xii].

Evidence proves that gun laws
work. States with stronger gun laws have half the rate of gun deaths than
states with weaker laws.[xiii]
Brady background checks, even with the private seller loophole, have blocked
more than 2 million purchases by felons, domestic abusers and other dangerous
people.[xiv]
In states with background checks for all gun purchases 38 percent fewer women
are shot to death by partners.[xv]

State-level gun laws protect
more than just their own residents. When Virginia limited gun purchases to one
per month, the proportion of crime guns recovered in Northeastern states originating
from there dropped by half in just two years.[xvi] When
Colorado closed the gun show loophole to require background checks at gun shows
its rank as an exporter of crime guns dropped from 17th to 32nd.
[xvii]

We need to shift the discussion
from gun control vs. gun rights to how reasonable gun laws make us safer. As
Supreme Court Justice Scalia wrote in the Heller decision creating an
individual right of gun ownership, “like most rights, the Second Amendment
right is not unlimited.”

Monday, November 10, 2014

Following the midterm election, the Speaker of the CT General Assembly tried to pin the blame for Democratic losses on voting for CT's 2013 gun law. It was his way of shifting the reason from other issues on which Democrats were perceived to be weak. I was thrilled to see this published in the Hartford Courant, the country's oldest newspaper.

In the wake of last week’s
Democratic losses in the CT General Assembly, House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said
Democrats lost because they voted yes on SB1160, the 2013 gun safety reform
bill[1].
Speaker Sharkey’s assessment of the political risk of supporting common-sense
gun laws is patently false.

Of the 106 Senate and House
candidates who voted yes on SB1160, more than 90 percent were re-elected[2]. Gun
regulation wasn’t a key issue in several of the contests where incumbent
Democrats lost, so it’s disingenuous of Mr. Sharkey to blame their losses on
support of gun violence prevention.

In the gubernatorial race, Gov.
Malloy made unwavering support for the landmark legislation a centerpiece of
his campaign. Grassroots gun safety advocates across the state were outspoken
in their support for the governor. Malloy’s opponent Tom Foley did just the
opposite, embracing extremist gun owners and taking an openly hostile position
on gun safety reform. Foley went so far as to say he would not enforce aspects
of the law[3]
and would repeal it if given the opportunity.

Foley’s pro-gun strategy failed.
He received nearly 40,000 fewer votes than in his race against Malloy in 2010. Malloy increased his margin of victory over
Foley fourfold, with gains coming from around the state, not just in urban
areas[4].
Compared to the 2010 campaign, the significant new policy debate was the gun law.
On that issue the winning strategy was
Malloy’s. As U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal remarked,“there are rewards for common sense and
sensible solutions, particularly in the area of stopping gun violence.”[5]

On the Democratic side, Speaker
Sharkey is a lone voice in blaming Democratic losses on support of gun safety
reform. In contrast, GOP leaders have not been shy about calling the state GOP party
to task for running a pro-gun candidate in a state still recovering from the
Sandy Hook school shooting. But for its poor choice, noted former U.S.
Representative Chris Shays, Malloy’s advantage on the gun issue could have been
neutralized.[6]

Speaker Sharkey’s thesis is
further refuted by the outcome on the other side of the aisle. Every Republican
House member who voted yes on SB1160 was re-elected. The only incumbent
Republican to lose was Mike Molgano, who voted against the 2013 gun bill. His
opponent, Caroline Simmons, a 28 year-old newcomer to elective office, made gun
violence prevention a prominent message in her campaign.

In Congressional races, first
term U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty, a vocal advocate for stronger gun
regulation, overcame a challenge from Mark Greenberg, an NRA “A” rated
candidate who is more concerned with limits on Second Amendment rights than
protecting us from gun violence. In his 2010 Congressional campaign, Greenberg
wrote “I will ensure that no bills violate our Constitutional Rights as lawful
citizens to own and possess firearms.”[7]

The NRA and its local ally, the
Connecticut Citizens Defense League, whose endorsement Tom Foley eagerly
accepted[8],
lost decisively in Connecticut.

But it wasn’t only in Connecticut
that voters expressed their support for reasonable regulation of firearms and
the candidates that champion gun safety reform. It happened around the nation. Despite
spending nearly $5 million in Colorado advancing its “guns everywhere” agenda[9],
the NRA was not able to unseat Gov. Hickenlooper, another sponsor of strong
state-level gun law reforms.

In Washington State, a solid 60%
of voters approved a universal background check referendum despite a
counterproposal designed by the gun lobby to confuse the issue. In Cook County,
Illinois, an overwhelming 86% of voters approved a tough
sense-of-the-electorate measure calling for universal background checks and
bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines[10]—key
elements of the law that Gov. Malloy signed last year.

Despite Speaker Sharkey misreading
election results, we cannot overlook his instrumental support in passing the
tough measures following Sandy Hook, or his recognition that lawmakers showed
integrity by voting yes on SB1160. I look forward to the Speaker’s support when
Gov. Malloy follows through on his proposal to close the loophole that allows
domestic abusers with temporary restraining orders to keep and buy guns.[11]

There is still legislative work
to be done to reduce gun violence. If last week’s election showed anything,
it’s that being on the right side of protecting communities from gun violence
is also good politics.